I can't say that I care anything at all about "Journey to the Center of the Earth" or "Meet Dave," both of which are getting panned by the critics. Of "Journey," A.O. Scott of the New York Times writes, "I have long vowed never to stoop to what I regard as the lowest kind of hackery, which is to describe a motion picture as a thrill ride, a heckofa ride or any other kind of ride. . . If this movie is not a ride, then what is it? One thing it may not be, quite, is a movie."
Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post writes about "Meet Dave:" it "is the kind of bland, generic, high-concept midsummer comedy that drives a critic to the thesaurus in search of new ways to say "vapid.""
"Hellboy II: The Golden Army" from Guillermo Del Toro seems to be faring better. Writes Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, "The trouble with the current spate of comic-book movies is that their numbing conventionality can make it easy to forget why you loved the original comics back in the day. "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" will help you remember."
"Standard Operating Procedure" from Oscar-winner Errol Morris ("The Fog of War") impressed Dana Stevens of Slate. She notes, "Errol Morris' brainy, meandering inquiry into the origin of the Abu Ghraib torture photographs that shocked the country when they were first published in 2004, is indisputably an impressive piece of documentary filmmaking."
Finally, "Fugitive Pieces" arrives at Market Street Cinema. Kirk Honeycutt of Hollywood Reporter opines, "The film is an impressive and often quite moving tale of emotional entrapment that will connect with festival and specialty venue audiences."
